DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): This proposal requests support to continue the multidisciplinary NRSA T32 training program in Speech, Hearing and Sensory Communication at Indiana University. The training program provides specialized research training in the Communications Sciences and Disorders for postdoctoral, predoctoral and medical students. Faculty and laboratory facilities will be drawn from Psychological & Brain Sciences, Linguistics, Speech & Hearing Sciences, Cognitive Science and Neuroscience in Bloomington and Otolaryngology, Radiology and Psychiatry in the School of Medicine in Indianapolis. The program has 10 core faculty members and an additional 26 affiliated and supporting faculty. Trainees carry out basic and/or clinical research in one of the core or affiliated laboratories and gain specialized knowledge in areas such as: speech analysis, synthesis and perception; anatomy and physiology of the auditory system; psychophysics of hearing; acoustic and articulatory phonetics; clinical phonology; perceptual development, phonological acquisition and development; clinical audiology, speech- language pathology, hearing impairment and cochlear implants; spoken word recognition and lexical access; and neuroimaging and computational modeling of spoken language processing. Postdoctoral trainees will be drawn from Speech & Hearing Sciences, Linguistics, Cognitive, and Developmental Psychology. Predoctoral trainees will be drawn from the current Ph.D. programs in Psychological & Brain Sciences, Linguistics, Speech & Hearing Sciences, Cognitive and Neuroscience. As in the past, training activities will consist of: (1) individual and collaborative research projects; (2) participation in weekly laboratory meetings, research seminars, journal clubs and workshops, (3) attendance at scientific or professional meetings; and (4) formal coursework as needed. Access to several different clinical populations for research is available through the Speech and Hearing Clinic in Bloomington and the ENT Clinics at the IU Medical Center in Indianapolis. Our long-term objectives remain fundamentally the same- to provide highly specialized research training in the Communication Sciences and Disorders in order to increase the number of qualified biomedical research scientists working on basic and clinical problems in Speech, Hearing and Sensory Communication. RELEVANCE: This application requests support to continue the NIDCD-sponsored NRSA T32 training program at Indiana University. The program provides research training in the Communication Sciences and Disorders for post- doctoral, pre-doctoral and medical students and is designed to increase the number of biomedical scientists working on basic and clinical problems in speech, hearing and spoken language processing.